Welcome to Link Research
 
When you are fighting for a place in the Search Engine Listings it's a good idea to investigate what listing techniques your competitors are using. This article looks at a few of the simple things you can do to improve your listing position.
Who is linking to your site?

Google currently has about 75% of the search engine market. Focusing your attention on your performance in Google will go a long way to improving your chances of potential customers finding your site. One of the ways you can help users to find you is by having links to your site on other web sites that have related or complementary content. Generally speaking, the more sites that link to yours the better but keep in mind that the quality of the site that links to yours matters too. I'm sure your competitors will have taken this opportunity.

You will be happy to know that you can find out who has links to your site and who has links to your competitors by using Google's 'links' command. In the Google search field enter links: followed by a web site address e.g.

Links: woodcraft-school.co.uk and then press search.

You will get a list of sites that link to the site you used in your link command. If you have done this for your site then we suggest you visit the linking site and read what they have to say. If there is scope for improvement contact the site owner and ask if the link details can be updated. If you can send the site owner a banner that can be used to link through. A good example of link banners can be seen at [Woodcraft School]. The banners are well designed and engaging.

By using the link command you can find out who is linking to your competitors and analyse the benefits these links might bring your competitor. Remember that each time a person browses on to your site it contributes to your ranking in the search engine and the longer they stay the better. Better still if they come back to visit again and buy something.

Task summary:

1. Find out who links to your competitors and analyse the advantage the link brings
2. Build a link strategy that at least matches your competitors
3. Contact the sites that already link to you and see if you can improve the link description
4. If you have an attractive banner see if you can get your link sites to use it. It could increase your clicks
5. Focus your efforts on sites that get significant traffic not the friend that owns a site but gets no visitors.

Regards,